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Dog Stories Dog Videos Dogs

“Angel” Dog Saves Boy From Cougar

Austin Forman has a guardian angel, and her name is Angel. She is a golden retriever, and she saved Austin’s life.

One Saturday, Austin was attacked in his backyard by a Cougar. Angel, only 18 months old, threw herself between the cougar and Austin.

Sherri Forman, Austin’s mother, said her son was outside in the evening with Angel, gathering firewood. She explained Angel generally runs and plays around the yard, but that day she was acting differently.

“[Austin] had come in at one point to tell me how cute Angel was being because she was sticking pretty close to him in the yard, which was unusual for her,” Forman said.

In hindsight she realized the dog was protecting her son.

When the cougar attacked, Angel protected the boy.

“She intercepted the cougar,” Forman said. “Austin came into the house very upset, and I had to get him to calm down so I could understand what he was saying. Finally he said ‘there’s a cougar eating Angel.'”

The big cat and Angel fought underneath the porch while Austin’s mother called 911. An officer was in the area and was able to kill the cougar.

When they pulled the cougar’s body off of Angel, the dog sucked in a deep breath. Angel walked over to Austin to make sure he was okay, and sat.

“She had some pretty nasty injuries across the front of her head and neck” said veterinarian Jack Anvik. “If there had been enough time for the two of them together the cougar would have probably killed the dog,” he said.

Austin said “I feel very good now that we know she’s alive and the fact that she saved me and survived is amazing.”

Austin was so grateful the he went with his grandpa and bought a huge steak for angel.

Source: CNN

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Dog Stories Dogs

Family’s Dog is Actually A Bear

A Chinese family has given up their dog. Why? Because it was actually a bear.

The family live in the Yunnan province of China. They adopted a Tibetan mastiff puppy while on vacation.

What they really adopted, however, was an endangered Asiatic black bear cub. The bear has been taken into care by an animal sanctuary.

The owner, Su Mou, told the China News Service that they began to get suspicious when their “dog” did not stop growing. He was devouring an entire box of fruit and two buckets of noodles every day. He grew to be 3 feet tall and 250 pounds before they called anyone.

Black bears can stand on their back legs, and they do so much more often than dogs. Combined with the increasingly strange appearance of “Little Black,” they realized their mistake. “The more he grew, the more like a bear he looked,” said their neighbor.

Su admitted she was scared of her pet, but she was also afraid of what would happen if they just released the bear back into the wild. They reached out to local authorities for help.

The bear is now being looked after at the Yunnan Wildlife Rescue Center.

Asiatic black bears are a protected species, and considered “vulnerable” by the IUCN. In China, the bears are hunted for their body parts, which are used in traditional medicine.

This isn’t the first time someone has mistaken a bear for a puppy. In 2015, a farmer rescued an abandoned “dog” from the woods. After realizing his mistake, he still kept the bear. Eventually, local authorities found out and the bear was taken into the care of environmental officials.

Source: National Geographic

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Dog Stories Dog Videos Dogs

Deaf and Blind Dog Rescues 3 Year Old

Aurora, a 3 year old, went missing after wandering away from her family property on a Friday night. Luckily for her, the family dog, a 17 year old Australian cattle dog named Max, followed her out into the wilderness.

Saturday morning, 100 police officers, emergency workers, and members of the public were searching for her.

Aurora’s grandmother Leisa heard her yelling, but she found Max first. Max, although deaf and mostly blind, led Leisa to Aurora.

One of the rescuers Ian Phipps said it was a wonderful outcome. “With the weather last night it’s quite lucky she is well because it was … cold and raining,” he told ABC radio.

“She’s a very hardy young lass to survive that without any ill effects and everyone, all the volunteers, are extremely happy.”

Source: ABC

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Dog Stories Dog Videos Dogs

Are Dogs Smarter than Cats?

It’s an age old question: are dogs smarter than cats? Dogs can be trained to do a variety of tricks very well, cats are much harder to train. Yet cats are extremely skilled natural hunters with unlimited curiosity.

A neuroscientist, a dog cognition expert, and a cat behavior researcher got together to answer the question. When brain cells are counted, one animal clearly has more. Still, recent studies challenge our ideas of what it means to be smart.

Suzana Herculano-Houzel (the neuroscientist) studies animal intelligence by looking at their brains. She found that dogs have twice as many brain cells as cats.

“Then the logical implication is that, yes, dogs are much more capable than cats,” Herculano-Houzel said.

Brian Hare, the dog cognition expert, is hesitant to compare intelligence across species. Hare says intelligence in animals is usually put in human terms.

“Asking which species is smarter is like asking if a hammer is a better tool than a screwdriver,” Hare says.  “Each tool is designed for a specific problem, so of course it depends on the problem we are trying to solve.”

Every animal has been shaped by evolution to solve the most important problems they face in the wild. So judging cats against dogs is problematic, since they come from different environments with different challenges.

So how should we study animal intelligence?

“A lot of what we already know about intelligence in other species falls on a gradient or a spectrum,” said Kristyn Vitale Shreve, a cat cognition and behavior research fellow at Oregon State University.

Consider hunting skills, for example. Cats are one of the most skilled, dogs are in the middle, and humans around the bottom. But if we test math, humans are on top and both animals are at the bottom.

One of the problems is that we don’t have the right methods to investigate dogs and cats side by side to get meaningful data. So, at least right now, it’s unfair to make too many comparisons.

“There’s this perception of cats being untrainable or maybe hard to work with,” Vitale Shreve said. “Cats display a lot of individual variation and have distinct personalities, which make it hard for researchers to understand them.”

Basically, there is no definitive answer on which is more intelligent, and it really depends on what you need a dog or a cat for.

The important thing is that we all love our pets as much as we can.

Source: PBS News Hour

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Dog Stories Dogs

Lost Dog Found 4 Years Later

Bradley Wieferich thought it was a prank when he received a call from a microchip company telling him his dog had been found in Toledo four years after she ran away. Toledo is more than a hundred miles away from his home.

“I was stunned,” Bradley said.

Toledo police found his dog, Bambi, wandering around a neighborhood. The officer took her to animal control, where she was scanned. Her microchip discovered, and gave Bradley’s contact info.

“She was very thin, but very sweet,” said Laura Simmons-Wark, who works for the shelter. “Who knows where she’s been all this time. We have no idea how she made it all the way down here.”

Bambi, who is twelve years old, was reunited with her family. Bradley says he initially didn’t recognize her, but then saw marking on her muzzle and heard her familiar howl.

“She was ready to come home,” he said.

Bambi had been with the family since she was 7 or 8 months old. She started escaping after their other dog, a golden retriever, died of cancer. They bought another dog to keep Bambi company, but she ran away again. After searching for a long time, they had to assume that she had been readopted or had died.

“I’m really amazed that she’s back,” Bradley said.

Bambi shows the importance of micro-chipping your dog, and to make sure to scan stray dogs for them.

“Not all stray dogs are homeless,” Simmons-Wark said. “Some are just lost.”

Source: ABC6

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Dog Stories Dogs

He Arrives Home To Dog Acting Strangely — Then He Sees What’s Hiding In The Bath Tub

Imgur user squishiepeaches owns a dog named Crosby. There were previously two other animals, a dog and a cat, but they both passed away. At first, Crosby’s owner thought that we  was fine with being the only animal in the house.

“This is Crosby. He is the best good boy,” squishiepeachies said on Imgur. “About 6-months-ago, he lost his kitty friend, and just over a month ago he lost his best doggo friend that he’s had as a companion since he was 8-weeks-old. Crosby has been pretty okay about being an only doggo, or so I thought.”

Crosby actually had a secret mission to find a new best friend. What he did caught his owner completely off guard.

When squishiepeaches returned home, Crosby was acting strangely. “On Thursday I came home, and instead of our normal routine of Crosby howling with excitement to see me, he led me straight to the bathtub,” squishiepeachies explains. When he followed Crosby into the bathroom, this is what he saw:

There was a little kitten in the tub.

This kitty was meowing up a storm,” he explained. “I’ve never seen this kitten before, and although I do have a doggy door, it’s way too high off the ground for this little baby to have snuck in,” squishiepeachies wrote. “Seems to me that Crosby must have brought her inside.”

crosby

“She has an uncanny resemblance to the kitty friend he lost 6 months ago,” squishiepeachies says. “I talked to the neighbors surrounding my house and she’s been seen before, but no one knows who owns her.”

crosby

Squishiepeaches decided to take the cat to the vet, to see if it was micro-chipped. He needed to know if this cat belonged to anyone before he decided what to do next.

The kitten was not micro-chipped, so the question was, should he keep it or not?

“She was, however, spayed just a few days ago, and is thought to be about 4 months old,” Squishiepeachies said. “The vet basically told me that if I took her to the shelter she’d be put down because there are already over 300 kittens at the county shelter alone that need homes. He said I could try putting her outside and hope she goes home, or I could keep her.”

Since Crosby evidently like this kitten, and didn’t want to be an only child anymore, he decided to keep the kitten. They named the kitten Raina Lil Ray-Ray.

crosby

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Dog Stories Dog Videos Dogs

Shelter Dog Moves into New Home and is So Excited When She Discovers What is in the Backyard

When a dog finally gets adopted from a shelter, it’s hard to imagine what is going through their minds. It must be such a relief to be out of a kennel, find someone who loves you, and to move into a nice home.

For some adopted dogs, they have never seen grass, or been outside to play. So when they finally have a yard, their reaction is just so precious. If you ever moved into a new house as a kid, it’s that same desire to go exploring in your new surrounding.

For a shelter dog, especially one that was abused or has never experienced life outside of a shelter, something as simple as a yard can send them into a tailspin. Literally, their tails will be out of control. This is what happened with a dog named Christy.

Christy is a West Highland Terrier, and she was recently able to experience this incredible feeling. Her backyard even came with a treat that most humans don’t have the luxury of owning.

Christy’s reaction is so adorable, and we are so glad her owners were able to catch the whole thing on film. She went from shelter dog to spoiled dog! Christy was adopted by a wonderful family in Florida. As you know, Florida gets very warm in the summer months and many residents need a way to cool off. We are talking about an awesome, amazing, swimming pool!

The  newly adopted dog notices the pool, and goes into a frenzy! It’s insanely cute, Christy is unable to contain her excitement. Completely freaking out.

shelter dog

Her owners make her wait patiently, she needs to learn her manners after all. It was a great opportunity for Christy’s first training session. She is very patient in waiting for the door to open.

But when that door opens, oh boy. Let’s just say it’s one of the funniest videos we’ve ever seen. You may have seen excited dogs before, but wait until you see Christy.

Any dog lover will enjoy the video below. It’s hard not to smile when you see a dog so happy! The fact that she used to be in a shelter but now is so joyful warms my heart.

Christy’s excitement over something as simple as a swimming pool is definitely a mood booster. Watch this adorable video, but don’t keep it to yourself! Share on facebook if you love this dog.

Source: Eager Pup Really Wants To Jump Into The Pool by BrianFreeman

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Dog Stories Dogs

What This Owner Did for Their Lovesick Dog Will Make You Smile

I can say that this is probably the best version of Romeo and Juliet you will ever hear.

One day, there was a dog that lived across the street from a cat. For almost a year, the dog would gaze across the street to see the cat in the window. For the dog, it was love at first sight. His owner knew the dog loved the cat.

But then the owner of the cat put up potted flowers, blocking the cat from the dog’s view. The cat’s owner had no idea about the heartbreak she was causing across the street.

Every day, the dog still looked out the window to see the cat, even though the cat could not be seen. The dog was sad, and it seemed to be getting worse every day. So the owner wrote a note and attached it to the neighbor’s window.

Since dog’s can’t express their feelings like humans do, the owner wrote a note on the dog’s behalf. The note confessed the dog’s love, and asked nicely if the flowers could be moved.

And did it work? Yes. The nieghbor gladly moved their potted plants, and even posted a note back that said “For True Love.”

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Dog Stories Dog Videos

Rescue Dog Experiences a Bed for the First Time and her Reaction is Heartwarming!

I can never get enough videos of rescue dogs. It is so inspiring to see these dogs FINALLY get the love and the homes they deserve. When a dog gets to use a bed for the very first time? Magical.

It’s awful to think that so many dogs are mistreated and abused every year; every day! We will never understand it. With all that heartbreak out there, it is nice to see some dogs get a happy ending. Especially when it is caught on camera.

Expect to have your heart explode with happiness when you see this video. You will see 7 year old Millie get to experience a new bed for the first time. We hope all dogs get to experience this kind of happiness.

Millie has just been rescued, and even at 7 years old she has never had a bed before! This video shows her reaction.

I love hearing the owner laughing in the background, because you can’t help but laugh too! Millie is so happy she doesn’t know what to do with herself.

Source: Rescue Dog Experiences A Bed For The First Time by staffoja

Can you even stand it? We are so happy that Millie was rescued and can be in a safe home. Rescue dogs are  always so grateful, and she is proof of that.

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Dog Stories Dogs

Dog Treated Poorly Finally finds a Foster Home

Kobe is an abandoned puppy who has finally found the perfect foster family. Kobe was abandoned by his previous owners, and when he arrived at the shelter he was just skin and bones.\

Fortunately Sean and Jane Stinchcomb, from Maryland, are fostering him and are giving him a better life. He is so happy!

Kobe is about 4 years old. His first taste of freedom came in the form of a McDonald’s cone he had on the way home. That alone made him smile.

The Stinchcomb couple also have two Pitbulls and four cats who are Kobe´s new best friends. Since then, he’s experienced nothing but fun and happiness, displayed by his constant tail wagging and contagious smile.

It is clear that he feels safe, loved and protected. These feelings are well deserved and overdue. For the first time, Kobe has a family to love him and care about him.

Kobe will be placed on the Baltimore Bully Crew’s Facebook page for permanent adoption. Sean knows it will be hard to let Kobe go, but also feels confident that his new, permanent family will be better for him.

It is common for foster families to get very attached to the dogs they foster, so many people don’t foster at all, to avoid the heartbreak.

However, it is better to have your heart broken that way than to know that a dog was put to sleep because there was no one to foster them. So yes, it hurts to let foster puppies go, but in the end it is worth it.

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smiling dog 4

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smiling dog 1

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Source: Bark Post 

Images via Baltimore Bully Crew/Sean Stinchcomb